Out of Beirut: Living Contradiction
Artforum, Oct. 2006, v. 45, no. 2, pp. 235-238
T.J. Demos surveys methods of recording traumatic memory, history and archival process employed by artists in the midst of conflict. Documentary video, labels for absent landscape paintings, deteriorated photographs, and bunker-like nightclub designs are utilized to demonstrate difficulties representing history in a direct manner. Adressing questions of truth in representation, especially during violent conflict, Demos suggests that the "deepest encounters with reality necessarily entail a flight into imagination, personal and cultural alike".
ITEM 2006.074 – available for viewing in the Research Centre
Videos, Artworks and Artists Cited
Here and Perhapse Elsewhere – Lamia Joreige
Love is Blind – Walid Sadek
Wonder Beirut: The Story of a Pyromaniac Photographer 1998-2006 – Joana Hadjithomas
Wonder Beirut: The Story of a Pyromaniac Photographer 1998-2006 – Khalil Joreige
Summer '88 – Paola Yacoub
Summer '88 – Michel Lasserre
Saida, June 6 1982 – Akram Zaatari
We Can Make Rain But No One Came To Ask – Walid Raad
Distracted Bullets, Symptomatic Video Number I – Joana Hadjithomas
Distracted Bullets, Symptomatic Video Number I – Khalil Joreige
B018 – Bernard Khoury
Walid Ra'ad